Abortion dehumanises us all
by Laura Perrins, The Conservative Woman:
Matthew Parris, discussing the Irish abortion referendum, said this yesterday: ‘I support women’s choice up until a late stage of pregnancy, do not believe human life is sacred, am not opposed to contraception or embryo experimentation and do not believe it’s always wrong to kill the born, let alone the unborn.’
Well, at least he is honest. It does not surprise me that someone who supports abortion does not believe human life is sacred and that there are some circumstances where killing newborn babies is acceptable. I suspect many pro-choice advocates secretly believe this but are not willing, at the moment at least, to admit it.
Philosopher Peter Singer has long advocated legal infanticide in certain circumstances. In Practical Ethics (1979), Singer explains that the value of a life should be based on traits such as rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness. ‘Defective infants lack these characteristics,’ he says. ‘Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings.’
In 2012, two Italian philosophers advocated the legalisation of infanticide, not limited this time to ‘defective infants’.
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